PubMed Central (PMC) Beta Search to Replace Current Search the Week of September 7th

The new PubMed Central (PMC) Beta search will replace the current PMC search the week of September 7, 2025.  

As previously announced, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is working on an update to PMC full-text search functionality and user experience. To prepare for this transition, we released a Beta version in April for you to preview and test. Based on your input, we have already made several improvements. There is still time to provide feedback; we invite you to try out PMC Beta search now and let us know what you think! 

How is PMC Beta search different? 

• PMC Beta search has an updated look and feel that is more mobile-friendly and consistent with the rest of the PMC website. We've also incorporated popular search features from PubMed, such as the Results Timeline.
• The update transitions PMC search to a more modern search platform, which provides users with more robust search functionality and accurate results, including
• Easy discovery of articles by searching on a title or basic citation data.
• Proximity searching on the full text.
• Targeted searches for terms and datasets in data availability statements.
• Updated searching with truncated terms and wildcards.
• A refined set of filters and search fields.
• The new search also includes journal content not previously discoverable in PMC, such as mastheads and advertisements from NLM's Biomedical Journal Digitization Projects. These items will now be returned as individual search results. 

As a reminder, the features on the PMC Beta search page represent the full set of features that will launch to the main PMC website in September. Some features of the current PMC search will not be included in this initial release. NCBI will continue to add and improve the new search after it launches, with priorities based on your feedback. 

Learn more 

For more information, check out the PMC Beta Search User Guide, our previous blog post, and the previous NLM Technical Bulletin announcement.